ONGC offered 10 pct stake in Vankor oilfield

The Vankor deposit, located in the north of the Krasnoyarsk Territory in central Siberia, was launched back in 1988. Source: Vladimir Vyatkin / RIA Novosti

Vankor is one of the biggest developed Russian oilfields and is scheduled to reach the rated capacity output of 25 million tons annually in the next couple of years.

Russian oil giant Rosneft has offered a 10 percent stake in
the Vankor cluster oil fields to ONGC Videsh Ltd (OVL), the overseas arms of
India’s oil and gas bellwether, PTI said, citing sources. The offer follows a similar offer made to CNPC a
month ago. The price offered to CNPC is believed to be $1 billion and OVL would
be looking at a similar sum.

Sources told PTI that ONGC is doing due diligence on the
proposal and will make an offer post that.
ONGC was not immediately available for official comment. The news agency added that Rosneft in August sent
a formal proposal to OVL for the joint development of Yurubcheno-Tokhomskoye
oilfield in eastern Siberia.

The Vankor deposit, located in the north of the Krasnoyarsk
Territory in central Siberia, was launched back in 1988; at the start of 2014
the initial recoverable reserves of oil totaled 500 million tons of oil and
condensate and 182 billion cubic meters of gas. “It should be taken into
account that the Vankor cluster is not a new, undeveloped or complex project.
The deposit already has the entire infrastructure, including the Purpe
pipeline,” Irina Grinets told RIR last month. She added that the exploration on
the site started in 2009 and some 21.4 million tons of oil were produced in
2013. In the next couple of years the field is scheduled to reach the rated
capacity output of 25 million tons annually.

OVL has a 20 percent stake in the Sakhalin-1 oil and gas
project in the Russian Far East. There have long been Russian media reports
that ExxonMobil, the project operator may be forced to divest a part of its 40
percent stake or even leave the project altogether, on account of U.S. sanctions
on Russia. The American oil major has denied the reports, saying it has no
plans to exit the project.

OVL had acquired the UK-listed Imperial Energy Corporation
Plc for $2.1 billion in January 2009, after Russian anti-trust watchdog, the
Federal Anti-Monopoly Service (FAS), cleared the deal in what was to be its
first acquisition of a foreign exploration and production company with
significant assets. The company invested another about $500 million in the
asset.

However, its all-along falling oil production has seriously
impacted India’s efforts to reduce its dependence on the imports of oil and
gas, which OVL claimed as its main objective of the Imperial acquisition.

India’s energy demand is expected to more than double by
2035, from about 700 million tonnes of oil at present to around 1.5 billion
tonnes.